Being Alone
by MissDillyDilly
Summary: Spoiler Alert for 6.3! Mac recalls a conversation with Stella, faces his own loneliness, and comes to a decision about Flack.


**Being Alone**

**Summary**: **Spoiler Alert for 6.3! **Mac recalls a conversation with Stella, faces his own loneliness, and comes to a decision about Flack.

**Disclaimers**: I have made no money from writing this story. I do not own anything connected with any of the CSI franchises, which I assume belong to CBS and its cohorts. I would quite like to borrow Gary Sinise, however… just for a day?

**A/N:** A one-shot set immediately after 6.3, so **spoilers for season 6**. Thanks to **JillSwinburne** for finding a nugget of gold in this otherwise dank episode.

* * *

"_You know, he used to shave every day."_

"_He'll get through this – it just takes time."_

Mac had seen the Stella's odd look at his apparent dismissal of Don's pain, along with his taciturn expression and unwontedly unkempt appearance. But she hadn't followed up: since her brief liaison with Adam, despite attempts by both of them to rebuild their relationship, something immovable and gross had sat between them. Time might wear it thin, or they might figure out what it was and attack it together but, for the moment, it was very present and very real.

He had felt unsettled for weeks now: the unsoftened memories of his father's death were strong and bitter and, combined with the continuing rawness of losing Jess and the anniversary of 9/11, his nerves were shredded. He felt and looked miserable and knew he was snapping at people, but he was finding it impossible to drag himself out of the quagmire.

Self pity – one of the worst sins, he'd always been taught, because it was a step along the road to despair. As a child, he had assumed this was just grown-ups getting him to behave: as an adult, he understood how right they had been.

Was that why he was avoiding Don Flack – because it would shine a harsh light on his own self pity, his own despair? Mac was always cruelly honest with himself: he knew it could take years to recover from something like this, and that sometimes even years were not enough. Don was trapped in a cruel, hard grieving, and the worst of the agony was yet to come.

He knocked back a beer: he thought it was his seventh, but he'd lost count. Nodding to the barman, he took another bottle, wondering vaguely how many he would have to drink before the pain went away. Knowing, in the back of his fuzzy brain, that some wounds could never be healed.

It was an awful knowledge that Don was just beginning to discover.

* * *

The news of Claire's death had crept up on Mac like an almost-silent assassin. A rumour scuttling across the office floor; a ripple of audible silence that grew into a mind-shattering roar; eyes in his direction, cells ringing, channels switched, naked disbelief. The human inability to comprehend events beyond imagining: the first line of self-defence, the first shutters coming down against the unthinkable.

His initial reaction had been to reject the reports as fantasy, not relating to the tower Claire was in, not as serious as they made out… And then, like so many others, he had found himself being dragged kicking, screaming and naked along a road sharded with glass, each fresh piece of news and new confirmation of the ultimate horror another vicious wound.

Perhaps, he thought incongruously, he had been lucky. The awful fact that everyone was fighting to understand this ghastly, terrible thing had cushioned him during the first few days: disbelief had softened the first strike of the snake. Perhaps, too, the absence of a body had lent him enough misplaced hope to act like a parachute, enabling him to slip quietly into the horror, rather than plunging in and feeling the full fury of the flood.

Don had had no such luxury: he had been assaulted by the reality of Jess' death without warning or mercy, and before he had time to process the fact that she was injured, she had already slipped into the far-beyond. He had gotten to say goodbye, but that was all.

But the pain went on. The first few weeks and months were, in some ways, the easiest: it was after the immediate flurry of activity had died down that the hollowness really bit. That was when you woke, howling into the night; or turned over in your sleep, felt the unused pillow beside you, and panicked for long seconds before memory supplied the missing information and your world collapsed again. That was when you began to feel obliged to start telling people you were OK, that you were coping: when people began not to know what to say, because all the platitudes had been used up so many times already.

That was when you began to feel truly alone.

* * *

He waved another newly-empty bottle, ignoring the bartender's momentary look of doubt. He was a regular in this tiny bar on the southern edge of the Bronx where no-one would think to look for him, and he wouldn't be the first patron to get drunk out of his skull and be carried out back to sleep it off until morning. He'd never reached that stage before, but he felt like he was heading there tonight.

"You got a ride home?" the man asked.

Mac recognised the unasked question. "I got a cab firm on speed dial. Don't worry – I'm a quiet drunk."

The other smiled, a little of the tension fading from this mouth. He handed Mac another beer. "Want to talk about it?"

Mac considered: perhaps, he thought, he did, and without warning, words spilled out. "My wife died on 9/11. My father died of cancer – years ago. My girlfriend flew half-way across the world to get away from me. A couple of months ago I got one friend in the morgue, another in a wheelchair. There's a woman I work with I'm too scared to tell her how much I care about her, and she's just slept with someone else – and I got another friend who's falling apart cause it was his girlfriend got killed." He stopped. It made some kind of sense – he thought.

"That's tough. Never figured you for someone with a backstory."

"I got enough backstory to fill a whole evening." Mac could hear himself slurring, but it didn't seem to matter any more. "He'll get through it – we all have to get through it. I'm not talking to him right now, and you know why? He – it's just like – if I try and help it'll be Claire again – all over again!"

The barman spoke carefully, obviously used to this kind of deep-felt ranting. "No-one else been where he is, have they?" Mac shook his head. "I figure you and he, you got something in common."

"Yeah." Mac looked morosely at his beer. "Yeah…"

He ought to help Flack. He had a unique insight into what he was suffering: he knew how easy it was to let things slide, which was why he always maintained his barriers against the world: knock them down, and he would come crumbling down with them, even now. Don had no-one to help him build those walls.

Do the right thing – that was another childhood lesson.

He picked up his cell. He ought to call Don, but he wanted to call Stella: wanted to tell her to get up here and comfort him, to forget the past and start again. He remembered the way she had clung to him In Greece – did she have to be that desperate before she could let him care? If he could just feel her arms around him again, warm and strong and loving – if he could bury his head in her chest, hear her heart beating and feel her breathing – then everything would be all right. Adam had the new tech now – pretty little Haylen Becall – he didn't need Stella any more…

With a jolt, he wondered if that was really why he'd hired her. He was horrified: surely his judgement hadn't lapsed that far?

He was drunk: perhaps he shouldn't call anyone. He might be doing more harm than good. But he ached for human contact – a friendly smile, a familiar voice.

Being alone was hell.

Slowly, half-scared of the demons he might be awakening, he dialled.

_The End_


End file.
